Coillte, Cycling Ireland, the Ox
The trail centre
The National Mountain Bike Trail Centre at Coolaney is the result of a multi-year partnership between Coillte (the State forestry company that owns the land), Cycling Ireland, Sligo County Council and local volunteers. The current network — around 40 km of waymarked singletrack split across 5 blue, 11 red and 4 black loops — opened in stages from the early 2020s out of the trailhead at the south end of the village. The eventual plan is for ~80 kilometres of trail across the Ox ridge linking inland Sligo to the Wild Atlantic Way. The trails are graded and signed; black-graded sections are serious.
Slieve Gamh in Irish
The Ox Mountains
The Ox Mountains run east–west across the south of Sligo from Lough Conn in Mayo to Ballysadare Bay. The Irish name Slieve Gamh has been translated as the storm mountains and as the mountain of the oxen — the modern English name is itself a back-translation. They are low, rolling, blanket-bog country with hard limestone underneath — never spectacular, often empty. Coolaney is at their northern foot. The trails climb up onto the ridge.
Pop 1,000, mostly since 2006
The new village
Coolaney is one of the fastest-growing villages in the north-west. New estates have gone in over the last fifteen years, the school has been expanded, and the population has roughly quintupled since 2006. The trade-off is that the village core still feels rural while the housing on the edge does not.